@wasabi:
The word "wraith", marked by the Oxford English Dictionary as being "of obscure origin", is first attested in 1513, with the meaning of "ghost or spectre" (that is, an apparition of a living or once-living being, possibly as a portent of death).
banshee picThe Banshee is a female spirit in Irish mythology, usually seen as an omen of death and a messenger from the Otherworld. According to legend, a banshee wails around a house if someone in the house is about to die.
Among European rural people, especially in Gaelic and Slavic folk cultures, the will-o'-the-wisps are held to be mischievous spirits of the dead or other supernatural beings attempting to lead travellers astray. Sometimes they are believed to be the spirits of unbaptized or stillborn children, flitting between heaven and hell.
One myth states that pixies were a race of people who were not good enough for Heaven or bad enough for Hell and were therefore forced to remain on Earth forever. Another legend claims that they were Druids who resisted Christianity and were subsequently sentenced by God to grow smaller and smaller until they accepted Christianity.Pixies are said to enjoy playing tricks on people, for example by stealing their belongings or throwing things at them. At night, they steal horses and bring them back before dawn, leaving only tangled manes as evidence of the prank. Some pixies are said to exude pixie dust, which is left in their footprints or floating behind them as they fly.
Fairies are generally portrayed as human in appearance and as having supernatural abilities such as the ability to fly, cast spells and to influence or foresee the future. Although in modern culture they are often depicted as young, sometimes winged, females of small stature, they originally were depicted much differently: tall, radiant, angelic beings or short, wizened trolls being some of the commonly mentioned. Diminutive fairies of one kind or another have been recorded for centuries, but occur alongside the human-sized beings; these have been depicted as ranging in size from very tiny up to the size of a human child. Even with these small fairies, however, their small size may be magically assumed rather than constant. Wings, while common in Victorian artwork of fairies, are very rare in the folklore; even very small fairies flew with magic, sometimes flying on ragwort stems or the backs of birds.
In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (Greek: Μινόταυρος, Minótauros) was a creature that was said to be part man and part bull. It dwelt at the center of the Labyrinth, which was an elaborate maze-like construction built for King Minos of Crete and designed by the architect Daedalus to hold the Minotaur. He and his son Icarus were ordered to build it. The historical site of Knossos is usually identified as the site of the labyrinth. The Minotaur was eventually killed by Theseus.
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